The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction.
The Sky Tower is a telecommunications and observation tower in Auckland, New Zealand. Located at the corner of Victoria and Federal Streets within the city's CBD, it is 328 metres (1,076 ft) tall, as measured from ground level to the top of the mast, making it the tallest freestanding structure in the Southern Hemisphere and the 28th tallest tower in the world. It has become an iconic landmark in Auckland's skyline due to its height and design.
The tower is part of the SkyCity Auckland casino complex, originally built in 19941997 for Harrah's Entertainment. Several upper levels are accessible to the public, attracting an average of 1,150 visitors per day (over 415,000 per year).
The world's tallest man-made structure is the 828-metre-tall (2,717 ft) Burj Khalifa in Dubai (of the United Arab Emirates). The building gained the official title of "tallest building in the world" and the tallest self-supported structure at its opening on January 9, 2010. Burj Khalifa was developed by Emaar properties, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and built by BESIX, Samsung Construction and Arabtec. The second-tallest self-supporting structure and the tallest tower in the world is the Tokyo Skytree. The tallest guyed structure is the KVLY-TV mast.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an organization that certifies buildings as the "World's Tallest", recognizes a building only if at least 49% of its height is made up of floor plates containing habitable floor area. Structures that do not meet this criterion, such as the CN Tower, are defined as "towers".
There are dozens of radio and television broadcasting towers which measure over 600 metres (about 2,000 ft) in height, and only the tallest are recorded in publicly available information sources.